Conference: Materiality: Objects and Idioms in Historical Studies of Science and Technology

Posted on2013/03/21byScott Campbell|Comments Off on Conference: Materiality: Objects and Idioms in Historical Studies of Science and Technology

CSTHA members may be interested in the following annoucement:

Registration is now open for Materiality: Objects and Idioms in Historical Studies of Science and Technology. Please visit the conference website here. It will be updated with exhibit information in the coming weeks. Spaces are very limited, so register soon if you’re planning to attend. The Conference will be preceded by a public lecture by Peter Galison. Please see details of conference and lecture below.

Materiality: objects and idioms in historical studies of science and technology.

May 3-4, 2013York UniversityToronto, CANADA

There is a renewed interest in materiality. After the turn to discourse and signs in the late twentieth century, much recent work in the history of science and technology has revived its focus on matter and meaning, and on their fusion in the potent objects we call “things”. But materiality is about more than things. As an historical object; as a story of origins; as a tension with immateriality; as an effect of assemblage and argument; and as a way of thinking about scholarly work, materiality begs for broader treatment.

This conference explores materiality as both historical object and emerging idiom in historical studies of science and technology. On one hand, it seeks to push into new sites of inquiry: How do we historicize materiality? When does materiality become a concern for historical actors and for scholars? How do the specific, local materialities of scientific and technical work figure in the wide-scale sweep of historical developments? But alongside new sites and questions, the conference explores emerging research tools and modes of scholarly expression that move beyond traditional text into sound, film and objects. Through paper presentations, hands-on sessions, exhibits and installations, we bring together a range of scholars and projects interested in thinking about materiality as historical object, intellectual resource, and scholarly expression.

Keynote: Peter Galison (Harvard University)

Presenters:

Katharine Anderson (York University)

Bob Brain (UBC)

Tina Choi (York University)

Kristen Haring (Auburn University)

Edward Jones-Imhotep (York University)

Carla Nappi (UBC)

Sophia Roosth (Harvard University)

Hanna Rose Shell (MIT)

Emily Thompson (Princeton University)

John Tresch (University of Pennsylvania)

William Turkel (Western University)

Peter Galison, Harvard University — “Time of Physics, Time of Art”University-Wide LectureMay 2, 2013 — 4:30pmRobert McEwen Auditorium, Schulich School of Business

Admission: free

Abstract: In the standard picture of the history of special relativity, Henri Poincaré’s and Albert Einstein’s reformulation of simultaneity is considered a quasi-philosophical intervention, a move made possible by his dis-connection from the standard physics of the day. Meanwhile, Einstein’s engagement at the Patent Office (or Poincare¹s in the Bureau of Longitude) enter the story as lowly day jobs — irrelevant to fundamental work on the nature of the world. I have argued, on thecontrary, that the all-too material and the most abstract notions of time cross in essential ways. In a collaboration with the artist William Kentridge (“The Refusal of Time”) we explored this intersection, pushing on history, physics, and philosophy into a more associative-imaginative register. This talk is an account of this complex of problems at the boundary of art and physics history.

The conference is made possible by the generous support of the SSHRC Situating Science Cluster, the Institute for Science and Technology Studies, the Faculties of Science and Fine Arts, and the departments of History, Philosophy and Science and Technology Studies/Natural Science.